


The Haunting

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M, background Jenna/Cally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1987-01-01
Updated: 1987-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:50:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Freedom Party ex claims to be Blake's forgotten love. Is he what he seems?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> Printed in the zine 'The Other Side 4', editors Susan Clarke and Joanne Keating, 1987  
> Strictly for Blake freaks and/or those into rebel ideology.

###

##

It panicked Blake at times, the emptiness beyond the slither of hull, the nothingness which looked static even when the ship took them at the inhuman speed of Standard by nine. He hated staring at unchanging star whorls with the impression of going nowhere. He was liable to get metaphorical about it. Funny how void was as claustrophobic as a cell. And greedy – space appeared to him a huge maw or belly, gone murky black with desires long stagnant. Space was the original hell, since it was damned to perpetual emptiness and emptiness, dear God, was hunger. No, he wasn't talking about the picture on the screen any more, he was talking about himself again. Not that there was a terrific deal to talk about there. _I can't remember,_ he screamed in a tantrum. And looked in unhappy jealousy at Jenna and Avon who shared the flight deck with him. What reminiscences did they while away the time with? Jenna and her mildly shocking trader's tales. Avon and his mysterious lover. Roj Blake and the pathetic, gaping black hole of his mind. The puritan, the workaholic, the prosaic chap who skulks in the safe superficial levels of himself, lest he go neurotic wondering who he is, which parts of himself are fake, which true. Who's forgotten how to have a personal life. The _mutoid_.

No, that was going too far. That particular piece of abuse genuinely scared him. He'd kept his rather too individualistic identity, his sensibility – even his romantic dreams weren't quite soured by drugs and mind-rape. Yet he still felt at times as if he were composed of void.

“Blake.” Jenna said his name in an amused fashion. The rebel looked at her before noticing there was a violent frown on his face. Ridding himself of it, he asked, “Anything wrong?”

“Message coming in. I think I can locate – yes, it's being beamed from sector five point five. Must be Station Che.”

Station Che was an underground rebel communications base – a rare attempt to coordinate the divergent, squabbling opposition parties. Blake, ever enthusiastic for rebel unity, had given the station his blessing – plus a coded channel to Liberator. It was the ship's only link with the rebellion at large.

“Latest report?” he asked, hoping – this time – he wasn't to be conscripted for yet another minor war.

“No. It's classified private. For you.”

Pulling a face, Blake put his chin near her shoulder to see. “Private? Didn't know there was anyone still alive who'd have anything private to say to me.”

“Maybe,” Jenna suggested, leaning back, “it's from that overly charming technician who took a mild fancy to you when we visited the station.”

“I didn't notice any technician,” he told her with his customary straight face – acting deaf and blind to such matters again. The irony amused himself, at least. Not that spacewise Jenna was fooled. Their eyes lingered together in the equivalent of a grin, and Blake left for his own station. It was kind of Jenna to flirt with him – cheered him up. Though he knew she picked his pedestrian self mainly because anyone else on board would take it too seriously. Her problem was, the one she had a genuine eye on didn't understand flirtation, frivolity _or_ casual sleeping friends – and Jenna was a mite stubborn about understanding profound emotional commitments. Wish I had a problem like that, Blake thought.

Curious, he focused his personal screen in, forgetting audio for the moment in anxiety to see who might wish a private word with him. But, disappointingly, the face was a stranger's. A study in mellow browns, like a sepia wash – straight fawn hair, eyes like polished wood which were the main feature of his face, dark wisps of beard. The message looked like a confessional, the way he kept glancing down at his hands which were linked but not quite twisting, then throwing deep looks at the recording screen. He may have seen a year or two more than Blake; and the brown seam of a scar had sheared off a knot of hair above his temple. Once he smiled, and the creases under his eyes kindled a warmth in Blake. I haven't met this fellow, have I? he quizzed himself. No, can't have done; but he appears a likeable chap. I don't know why he has that meek look about him – not dissimilar to a woebegone Decima's. Must be after something from me.

Rewinding the message, Blake took up his ear-mike and played it through properly. It amazed him from the first word.

“Roj,” the stranger began, and paused there. He fingered his scanty beard just long enough for Blake's suspense to bite. No-one called him Roj. Not since his dead colleague Bran Foster. In fits and starts the message continued. “The network tells me you remember Travis. You mentioned the fact on Station Che, I think. Didn't mean much to them, that lapse in your conditioning, but – the implications are rather momentous, for me. Is hatred the only passion which corrodes your memory treatment? I fear it may be; old rebels never die precisely, they just misplace their hearts in the swamp of fury and bitterness. I can't understand why I haven't yet stopped a laserbeam – figured a career as a rebel promised me an early retirement. Us old timers, comrade, are an error of fate – no human is supposed to cope with fighting one's own world and people for seventeen years. There was some bugger-up and the grim rebel-reaper didn't catch you and me when we were young and brave, when it was still possible to die content. We were a family, Roj, we never doubted then, did we? Not with the wisdom and solidarity of our comrades for support.

“The thing I most miss about those Freedom Party years... granted we wasted half our time idealising our anger into euphoric fervour for a just and gentle world. But we dedicated the other half to idealising ourselves – our friendships – yours and mine, Roj. We were utopians, and not just politically. In our transitory camps beyond the domes we lived out in miniature our future perfect world. We were as civilized as humans _should_ be – or we answered to our comrades. By trial and error and dead serious argument we nutted out and _acted_ our blueprint for a social paradise. We changed our natures – ah,” he grinned, “you didn't see many of my faults in those days, comrade. Frequently I wonder whether our love would ever have been as pure and kind away from the Freedom Party environment. I still love you, Roj; the fact that I do is the sole thing I have left to be proud of. I always feared the neverending fight would gradually negate all the good in me. I've seen the Federation steal our finer feelings in that insidious way too often. The mere fact of resisting them corrupts us, that's the worst lesson. If they haven't ruined the conscientious and feeling friend I knew, Roj – if you remembered _me_ before you remembered Travis – please meet with me. I've travelled to Station Che to transmit this.

“You know, I always had a premonition it would end this way – you the only one for me, and you lost. Damned for you, I used to call it. I so believe a part of you is here that I wonder whether you don't feel incomplete. Ever wonder where in space the missing part of you got to? I tell you, you're twined with me by nights. Am I approaching this too romantically? I always was too absurdly the romantic; but I can't imagine you changed, either. Not for me. It would mean the universe if things were still between us as they used to be, until the day of your capture five years ago. It would mean you and I haven't lost to the soulless Federation, Roj. My soul.”

The monologue was grave, earnest, meditative. Though huskiness weaved through his quiet tone. With a last look into the recording screen – that is, indirectly, into Blake's eyes which he must have been imagining – he leant to end the transmission. Then he hesitated and dropped his elbows on his knees, swearing in a voice soft with black humour. “I forgot to damn remind you of my name. Are you laughing at me too? I won't leave you searching that mutilated mind of yours fruitlessly. Roj, it's your Yevgeny. Under the scars and worry-lines, that is.”

There the message terminated.

But Blake's heart continued to thump with disconcerting heaviness. The words had fled his mind immediately – he was laid too flat by the gist of it. In an effort to backpedal from the tide of emotion in his throat, he needled himself deliberately. That blows your cover rather neatly, doesn't it? So Blake the bachelor revolutionary once had things other than revolting on his mind. Wonders will never cease. So in years past somebody cared for this sorry rebel that deeply too.

And still cares –?

“Seen a ghost?” asked Jenna, seriously.

“I'm not completely sure yet, Jen.” Wondering vaguely what state his face was in, Blake rewound the message and let it engross him again. Yevgeny. A morbid speech in parts, but had the Freedom Party truly been like that? Blake often mourned the like-minded fellow fighters whose names he didn't even know. Here was a relic of that wiped, regretted past – Yevgeny – catching Blake's lost years in a net of magic. Not just a comrade, this serious sepia fellow with wistful sloping eyes, a scrawny beard, a lean gentle face like a saint – but a particular friend, as rebels liked to express it...

Blake bit his cheek against a grin, then had to hang his head for fear of the dampness in his eyes. It's shock, my emotions are haywire, he thought. He's the answer to a prayer. And prayers are never damn answered, not in the Federated Worlds – but God knows I've been lonely fit to shoot myself... Just how precious much did the brainbutchers thieve from me? How could the subhumans deny me _this?_ And leave not so much as a face, a name to wring melancholy comfort from in my cabin. One feels such a ridiculous joke being a mental virgin at thirty-four. My years from twenty-one to thirty forged – how many of those drab, empty years did Yevgeny swell out with his mellow voice, his expressive face? And when can I fall to my knees and thank him for _existing?_

The tape ended, but Blake maintained a still of the speaker on his console screen. Both Jenna and Avon were following his ruminations from the corner of an eye. The free trader tried again. “Are you all right, Blake?”

Blake indicated ambivalence. “A little flabbergasted.”

“Bad news?” Jenna swapped meaningful eyebrow movements with Avon, who continued for her. “You are rather pale, Blake; if you don't wish us to panic and drag in Cally and her notorious medical kit, I recommend you give us an indication of what's wrong.” Tucking his arms neatly behind his back, Avon struck a listening pose.

The prudent part of Blake warned him, this is one situation I'm incapable of judging without crippling bias. If Liberator is to run like a scalded Warg Strangler to Station Che, my shipmates will insist on a decent idea of why. These two are probably the nearest to me of my crew – or at least the ones who take me as a mere human, fallible and quirky as the rest of the race. I can't think straight, not about a fascinating stranger who talks to me like a long-lost love.

So frustrating, longing to believe – damn, but you'd think _that_ memory would defy their criminal manipulation if any were going to.

“The message, ah --” Blake looked at each of his companions frankly. “The message is highly personal. Nevertheless there's a problem, and I think I'd like your opinions. If you don't mind taking a look?”

“On the contrary,” Avon said glibly – he'd doubtless been coming to his own conclusions in the incandescent regions behind his dark eyes. “We will enjoy your embarrassment.”

That, Blake suspected, was Avon's idea of being supportive. “You will indeed, Avon, I guarantee it.” Decisively, and with a neutral face, he transferred the transmission to the main screen. It was a gesture of friendship, anyway. He could hardly hope for this cagey crew to share things with him if he didn't share first. Before this he'd had woefully little to offer in the way of meaty personal information.

For the third time Yevgeny delivered his thoughtful, emotionally pregnant lines, for Jenna and Avon to weigh up. The two listened with clinical concentration – which told Blake they were pleased to be taken into his confidence. After Yevgeny's belated introduction, he switched off and steepled his fingers under his chin.

The free trader said, “Is that your idea of a problem, Blake? I would have thought it to be a welcome one.”

Avon turned, face mild and considering. He chose his words delicately, mindful of Blake's feelings. “I gather you don't recall him, Blake, or you wouldn't have needed to ask our opinion.”

“I can't say the face is familiar to me,” admitted the rebel.

Avon nodded fractionally; he knew Blake's psycho-rehabilitation was a tender subject. “At the risk of taking circumspection to the point of cynicism, Blake – claiming past, forgotten friendship _is_ the oldest con trick in the book. You're a natural target for it, what with your memory suppression and your fame.”

Grateful to be dragged back to earth, Blake argued, “And what motivation is there for anyone to con me? It isn't as though I'm rich pickings... cancel that. It isn't as though anyone off this ship knows I'm rich pickings.”

“You do fly the most magnificent vessel in human space,” protested Jenna on her Liberator's behalf.

“So we do,” he smiled at the pilot. “And you think that an opportunist pirate might try any avenue to get aboard her?”

“The like has been known to happen in my neck of the woods. It's quite possible that this Yevgeny is consummate actor who's chatted with rebels familiar with the Freedom Party and yourself. Still, the simplest explanation remains that he's genuine.” She wasn't even teasing him this time.

“He looks a sincere fellow,” mused Blake.

That rang warning bells in Avon; time for a little measured sarcasm. “Pray don't be taken in my looks, Blake. Let's leave that particular Achilles’ heel to Vila.”

The rebel eyed him levelly. “You're skeptical of the whole thing, then?”

“It's a good survival strategy for one of us to remain skeptical in any given situation – and in this situation no-one expects it to be you.”

“He means, Blake, we're just being careful.” Jenna touched his arm in a pact, and moved to the navigation console.

“Fair enough.” That was settled – prudence was Blake's concession, going to Station Che would be theirs.

Avon hadn't yet grasped that a bargain had been sealed. “You intend to meet with him, then?”

“Meet him?” Blake repeated, and the technician decided that was the stupidest question he'd asked in a long while. “Damn right I intend to meet him.”

“Very well. I suppose the others should be told we're no longer on random flight, then.” Avon withdrew quietly from the flight deck, to inform Cally, Gan and Vila that Blake had some personal business to attend to.

Jenna plotted a course to Station Che and checked it to her satisfaction. “Flight time will be twenty hours at Standard by five.”

“Thanks, Jenna. That will give me time to think.”

Joining him at his console, the free trader studied the still on the screen there. Jenna had an exacting eye, but she noted, “He's handsome, in his own quiet way, isn't he?”

In diffident but honest joy Blake said, “I think he's damn beautiful, Jen.”

#

When Avon returned to the flight deck, Blake was absent. Shut away in his cabin with Yevgeny's message, Jenna said.

“I gave Cally a detail or two,” the technician reported. “I didn't think he'd mind. She waxed delighted for Blake's sake.”

“So I imagine – Cally's as soft as Blake is. I've come to the conclusion rebels are, no matter how many wars they wade through.”

“Blake certainly likes to believe rebels are sensitive souls by definition. His band may have been. You sound suspicious.”

“I'm never not. If you'd been stranded on a desert world by persons unknown and were consequently starving, then someone appeared with your favourite dish – no pun intended – would you suspect you were being manipulated?”

“Ah, but we're cynical crims, Jenna.”

“It's illogical of me to feel uneasy, just because Blake's being handed on a platter what is – all too obviously – his dearest wish. It's too perfect.” Jenna shrugged. “Perhaps Blake just has freakishly good luck. But perfection worries me.”

“Because perfection is not a naturally occurring state. I,” commented Avon, a little aggrieved at these greys invading what was supposed to be Blake's black and white character, “always understood freedom for the masses to be his dearest wish.”

“We've all noticed he's morbidly obsessed with his lost past. This Yevgeny's giving him that back. Plus one of the rare friends from that past whom Blake _didn't_ get killed – good for the guilt complex. And a close emotional attachment thrown in. Wrap that lot up in a bundle and Blake would kill for it. Evidently he thinks this chap is the best thing since time distort drive.”

“Presumably he would,” said Avon, “if under the conditioning he's still in love with the fellow.”

“I squirm to see him sucked so quickly into anything. Rebels are traditionally damnably lonely, you know. Blake's admitted as much to me. He doesn't remember loving anyone after his sister and brother – he told me that once. I've been trying to imagine how that must make him feel.”

“His situation does sound rather abhorrently unnatural.”

That, in case you missed it, was an expression of sympathy for Blake's plight.

The technician wandered to his station, continuing as if to himself, “Though, in some instances, I imagine it's easier on the brain cells to forget old loves. If he thinks remembering is worth it, I wish him luck.”

#

'If you remembered _me_ before you remembered Travis...' The phrase nagged him.

Blake hadn't. But it didn't follow that hate was more real to him than love, as Yevgeny implied. It didn't mean he was prey to the corruption Yevgeny said was the pitfall of rebels. Though there was no way of telling whether he _had_ been a more civilized person when Yevgeny knew him. True, Blake would traverse light years on the scent of Travis; but he would go a damn sight further to recover Yevgeny.

Wasn't there an ancient Terran legend about a wizard who gave great gifts? People travelled through hell and deep space to his lair, to ask for a heart, courage, comprehension – whatever they believed they were lacking. And the wizard revealed to each that they'd possessed all along, within themselves, the gift they'd been questing for. Blake had believed himself without love. Six years of yearning, blind to the fact that it was already his.

After watching Yevgeny's face for hours on his cabin viewer, Blake was beginning to convince himself he recognised it. Like falling in love with a portrait, he thought wryly. But it was surely natural for him to be infatuated with what Yevgeny offered. He slid between the awe of thinking, this was my comrade-lover, and the sorrow of having the recollection of those years of his companionship robbed. Perhaps he'll make it up to me, and I to him, and fling that in the faces of all the Federation bastards that litter the Milky Way. Then – as Yevgeny says – their victory will have been a Pyrrhic one. Whenever we fugitives care for each other, though the blood on our hands forms calluses on our hearts and the blood of friends paralyses the instinct to make more friends – then we win.

#

Station Che was a wind-ruined place. A downbeat, glum planet on which to hide a rebel fortress; but why not? The rebellion was no longer the sunlit otherworld of his younger years. These days it was a taskmaster, dispatching its odd-job soldier on grim missions that each tripled the bounty on his name. Dead, he was worth a fortune to any ruffian. Alive he was worth damn little to the people who knew him, and less with every job he undertook. Not that his passion for the rebellion had waned – on the contrary. He thought of nothing else.

Hanging around in the narrow lanes of the station, where wind hurtled noisily, he'd developed a hollow cough. One of these years he'd tell them the next assignment would be his last. God knew what he'd do with himself then. Go away, perhaps, to die placidly and in his own time.

That was a joke. Fate had a death on the job lurking to pounce on him when he wasn't looking. The longer he waited, the more desolate that inevitable laserbeam from an anonymous trooper who despised him seemed. In self-satire, he'd even concocted a nickname for his little quirk – xenomortphobia. Fear of dying at the hands of strangers, enemies.

It was a consequence of Felipe, of course, like everything was a consequence of Felipe. To follow in Felipe's footsteps, slaughtered like a squealing animal isolated from the herd, was the darkest path he could envision. Yet he'd resigned himself to it eight years ago.

In the meantime, there was Roj Blake. Young Roj, a picture with the perverse dark eyes _he_ never tamed and the too-tender mouth. Unruly Roj with his passionate faiths and his generous heart and their stormy, ragged, soul-probing debates. The last human being who'd cared enough to stay his slide into this twilit underworld. Wayward Roj who was putting his foot in it again.

Funny how he was emotionally wrapped up in Roj, as though that massive row was the last intimate contact he'd had with anyone. For months he'd been ambivalent about taking on this mission. What hooked him had been preparing that tape; weaving an idyll to trap Roj that had trapped himself as well. From the profundity of his own loneliness he guessed at Roj's. Seeing Roj would be like having his innocence again. It would be a masquerade of life as it should have been.

At times he feared Roj would remember how things were between them and not come. But no, the barbaric work of the psycho-manipulators wasn't that easily undone.

Roj, my weary old soldier, come and play make-believe for a while with another weary old soldier who never forgot you.

#

Jenna decided to look Yevgeny over before he was unleashed on the ship. She'd do as much for any stranger, and Blake needn't know.

“If you like, Blake, I'll go fetch Yevgeny,” she suggested once orbit was established. “If Station Che catches wind of you again you might be kidnapped for a day or two like last time.”

“I'm not in much of a social mood,” he agreed. “Perhaps I would prefer to meet him on familiar territory – and in the privacy of the ship. Never know, I might make a frightful fool of myself.”

“At least you needn't be nervous about the impression you'll make,” she said kindly. “Since he's fanatical about you already.”

“It's such a weird situation,” Blake laughed, uneasy. “Spooks me.”

So the free trader took two bracelets and teleported.

An off-duty tech took Jenna to the shabby dosshouse where Yevgeny was staying. She rapped on his door, introduced herself as a friend of Blake's, gave him a bracelet, and frisked him.

As her hands passed over his shirt he asked in mild complaint, “Roj _delegated_ this task?”

Probing whether it was Blake who mistrusted him. A fair inquiry. “Blake doesn't need to delegate; I see to my own work.”

“Like bodyguarding?”

“I'm guarding myself.” Jenna answered that one too. He was subtle enough, this Yevgeny. He was also clean of harmful instruments of any kind, and had submitted to the search without resentment. Which was more than she'd do. Looked like he passed muster for now. This may work out fine; she looked forward to the happier atmosphere on the ship if it did.

The stern free trader gave Yevgeny a grin, said, “Welcome to the Liberator,” and requested teleport.

#

A ghostly figure wavered next to Jenna's familiar silhouette. That was him. The teleport painted in the already beloved details. Lean, loose limbs, straggly hair, a face somewhat long and solemn; and deep, abstracted brown eyes that now were meeting his. A fantasy becoming tangible, as though the teleport created him by magic there just for Blake, as though Zen had become a wish-fairy. Dear God, he has a beautiful face, thought Blake; and why such a sad one?

Jenna found it impossible to watch, the way Yevgeny looked at Blake and the way Blake looked at Yevgeny. No-one should be that emotionally naked, nor – that hopeful. It was the hope that made her awkward. One always winced lest it be disappointed.

Coming round the teleport console, Blake wrapped one of Yevgeny's hands like a legendary treasure or a hurt animal in the two of his.

“Comrade.” Yevgeny laid his cheek by Blake's neck. “Thank you for coming.”

Carefully, Blake kneaded his shoulder. “I'm sorry, Yevgeny, that my treatment hasn't yet decayed. I was promised it may, in time.”

“You dinna know me, Roj?” When his voice was husky a sub-Alpha accent betrayed itself.

Blake hesitated before his searching gaze. “In a way I don't – but by no means do I see you as a stranger. You've told me something of what we were to each other. I feel accordingly close to you. I'd dearly like to know you as I once did, if you'll be patient with me...”

“Ah, I must have confused you appallingly --”

“No, quite the... I feel damn bad about not having managed to remember you, Yevgeny.” Blake pressed a palm to his temple, apologising for the state of his head, gnashing his teeth at it.

“It's none of your fault, Roj... hey, my poor fellow, the past is past anyway, no matter how good or how bad it was. I'd willingly have mine wiped too to be with you in the present. And at least with the way you are --” he gave a smile that Blake could swear was familiar, for it opened a pocket of joy in himself he hadn't known was there - “we maybe get to court all over again.”

Jenna, whom Blake had asked to hang around, she being a practiced judge of crooks – took her leave to pilot Liberator from orbit. Blake may be giving lip service to the warnings of herself and Avon. But his behaviour suggested he took it for granted that Yevgeny was as pure as nova light. Perhaps it just takes the honest to know the honest, she told herself flippantly.

#

From a baggy trouser pocket Yevgeny pulled mementos. A holo of a motley looking gathering, Blake and himself grinning amongst them. “Space, were we ever that young?” said Blake, committing to memory – this time – the names of the faces Yevgeny pointed to. “The Ninth Rebel Hussars on parade, this is. There's Radha giving you a squeeze; dear friend of yours, she was – so she ought to be, the number of times she saved your rash skin. The dark lad was Felipe...”

Then there was a crumpled Freedom Party manifesto. Together they laughed at its optimism, pained and pleased that they'd once been such dreamers. “God's fools,” said Yevgeny, a phrase Blake didn't understand. “And this you gave to me,” he continued shyly, rolling up his sleeve. About his wrist was a silky band of rose and amber twined, with hieroglyphs in a pearl-like stone. Blake fingered the alien craftwork. “A little piece of culture from Guelakis. Popularly known as corpse-rings – funny name, but on Guelakis people are buried in nothing but the tokens given by those who cared for them. And corpse-ring sounds prettier in Guelakin. They were in fashion among rebels, being from a neutral world we admired. Naturally, none of us were inclined to apply for legal State bondings, so we adopted different alien customs – it was trendy to go non-Terran.”

“What does the writing say?”

“Guelakin love-phrases,” shrugged Yevgeny. “Not too dissimilar to Terran love-phrases, when translated. I gave you one too.”

“I suppose mine ended in a prison disintegrator.” Blake looked at his feet. “Yevgeny, I'm still reeling.”

“I didn't mean to disturb what equilibrium you have, seeing you again.”

“Blessings come in threes. I've been given freedom – Liberator and crew – and now you. Remind me never to complain again. It's just that I feel at such a disadvantage with you --”

“That's funny, Roj, so do I,” Yevgeny said quietly – awkward, thought Blake who was peering at his friend with insatiable curiosity. “Love must be situated in the memory – how can you love a person you remember nothing of? These years I've been – crazy with solitude, I don't know. I can't tell you how it is to be here. I'm not easily intimate with people, you're my only chance. Takes discipline to tread carefully with you, my amnesiac love. Knowing that if the brainbutchers hadn't got you, you'd be hugging the soul from me just now – at least, I must believe you would be --”

That left no choice but for Blake to gather him near. It was an awesomely tender sensation, he discovered, to hold someone. “I've been hellishly isolated too,” he offered in a muffled voice.

“There has been no-one for you?”

“No, not in those four years so dead with drugs that I could feel no more than think. I was beginning to believe there was something wrong with me. Inhumanly distant, or frigid, or the like.”

“And you too warm for your own good.” Yevgeny pulled away, fond and humorous. “I promise you one thing. It was lovely between us. You thought so too – honest.”

Blake smiled. His friend's eyes were breathtakingly close. Mild, kind of woolgathering eyes.

“And if I'm not mistaken,” Yevgeny continued, “you were even known to get passionate once or twice in a blue moon.”

Blake's smile deepened to a grin. Don't let me look too forlornly eager about that one, he thought. He was aware his emotions were running high and wild, beyond his control.

Settled there on a leisure room couch, Yevgeny became his confidant. Here was someone with whom Blake was at liberty to be fallible, or scared, or softer than was wise in the galaxy at large. Yevgeny told Freedom Party tales until Blake had an idyllic, sad, funny picture of his lost years. He was even teased out of worrying about his mind treatment. “I suppose you don't remember the time you were away from camp testing our newfangled trooper-detector and a trooper stumbled upon you in the woods. You told him the detector was a seismocyph, and you were a State geologist. Under his scrutiny you predicted a massive earthquake by taking a few human presence readings, and advised his squad to evacuate in haste to beyond a fifty kilometre radius,” Yevgeny would relate solemnly.

“Now that's ridiculous,” Blake protested.

Or there was, “Perhaps you'd rather not know about that reconnoitre of yours to a Fed tent-village, which happened to be in the midst of a wild party. A pair of uniforms who'd wandered into the forest with romantic inclinations pulled you down from a tree. The sloshed squad leader welcomed you with liberal entertainment as the Outsider spy he'd invited along for a drink. In the early hours you weaved home offering a wealth of worthwhile inside information about who was sleeping with whom in the trooper ranks and how to brew berry brandy. I was a mite sus about how far you took your fraternising with the enemy – for weeks after you were telling me what a nice face the squad leader had.”

“You missed your calling as a con artist,” was Blake's opinion of this one.

After Blake had lost track of time, Yevgeny fell to yawning. “Guess your ship cycle is out of sync with my planetary day. When's your night time, love?” Then he dropped his eyes. “Do you mind, me slipping into old names like that?”

“I never minded anything less. I wish you to behave naturally with me. Then I won't feel I've buggered things up too much by getting myself the treatment.”

“Roj, it feels pretty unnatural not kissing you hello after five hard years. May we?”

Blake merely motioned with his head, too captivated by the suggestion to waste attention on answering it. Yevgeny took his face in four gentle fingers.

The lips of his friend were delicate rose, and their softness softened something in Blake's breast. Strands of beard tickling his chin amused him. Rapt in the tenderness, he pushed his tongue to touch Yevgeny's; then jumped back to shallower waters at the seductive sweetness it created in him. When Yevgeny parted their mouths, Blake hung his head to fight a wilful hunger to kiss until the next watch. Don't take away the intimacy.

He told himself, one moment you're poking your tongue down his throat, the next you're staring at the toes of your boots. Get your act together or he'll strand you here again as a dead loss.

But when he glanced up Yevgeny was smiling. “I've not seen you so spooked,” he said, “since you first confided that you believed your friendship for me to be a romantic one. I touched your shoulder in commiseration then and you jumped a light year.”

Blake grinned. “You'll have to forgive me if I'm clumsy.” He gazed at Yevgeny, fascinated by the knowledge that he had made love with this person. The way Yevgeny talked, his amnesia meant he was missing out on the most meaningful, wonderful thing in the stars. How could he not be caught in a trap of yearning?

“When's your sleep-time, Roj?” repeated Yevgeny.

“A few hours ago, I think.” I know that in a sense I only met him this afternoon. But we need this like we've never needed anything. The _humanity_ of it. Taking Yevgeny's hand he said, “Come on, then. I'd like to have a fellow human in my cabin for once.”

#

Swaddled in warmth, Blake lay curled to Yevgeny's flank. Blake was wary of dependence. He'd kicked the drug habit the Federation had dumped on him, after a few sweaty nightmare fevers. He'd avoided dependence on the security of the State, with its mass psychological manipulation to make you feel freakish and isolated if you stepped outside your appointed niche in the machine.

But _people_ were different, he argued; he'd always made a point of depending on people. Because he didn't want to be a loner, because there was nothing worthwhile in Federation space but the good people, and faith must be invested in something.

So was it all right, clinging to Yevgeny this way, dependent upon the gifts Yevgeny was giving him?

“You've not changed after all, not a whit,” Yevgeny had purred in amusement; whereupon Blake realised he'd been desperate to hear just that.

It was dangerous, the fact that last night was the only profound piece of sensual intimacy he had in his depleted memory banks. Last night had been simple, gentle – and emotionally it had hit Blake like a Pursuit Ship. Veiling his eyes against Yevgeny's skin, he pictured again his friend's face gone joyously beautiful – with emotive passion for _him_.

He knew he was entranced, erotically. Lying here he longed again for exuberance to spirit them far away from the ship, the rebellion, this mess of a galaxy. He was left with the somewhat melodramatic feelings that he might die if Yevgeny never made love with him again.

Still, it was Yevgeny who had cried a little – that bewildered Blake. At times he couldn't follow Yevgeny's emotional responses – but then he was ignorant of the history behind them. So that he knew how to help Yevgeny scarcely more than he knew how to help himself.

#

Mostly the crew saw Yevgeny when following Blake about with their fingers absently twined. Or he would help Blake with his work, lost in long and quiet discussions over minor repairs, providing companionship on his watches. Blake's mooniness, as Jenna termed it, quickly became the crew's third standard target for wisecracks, after Vila's propensities for grog and running away and Avon's affinity for computers.

The free trader considered how Yevgeny might fit in on Liberator. Vila liked him - “A bit the pensive kind, but he talks to me like one human being to another – none of these patronising cliches people usually dish out to Deltas, or thieves, or persons of more discretion than valour.” Gan called him nice, simple as that. He'd even done quite a decent job of charming Avon – by speculating what manner of crime might have got a fine upstanding Alpha like Avon put away. For a grave rebel veteran he could be quite a wit. His wildly off-target and slanderous guesses had Vila in cheeky fits of giggles. Avon retaliated, however. Once he appeared on the flight deck to find Blake, with rolled-up sleeves and laser probe amidst a tangle of equipment, giving his brain a brief rest by kissing Yevgeny. Padding stealthily to the weapons console, Avon glanced at the scanners and barked, “Pursuit Ships bearing nine-one-two – Zen, battle stations.” By the time Blake had untangled himself and bowled through his debris to the console, Avon was attending to his routine checks with saintly calm - “Did I mention Pursuit Ships?” Yevgeny had enjoyed that.

Only Cally, who had been the most willing to welcome Blake's friend, tended to be ambivalent in his presence – for reasons that appeared to mystify herself as much as Jenna. But then Cally was a weird lady in anyone's book. Perhaps Jenna should go have a deep and meaningful about the matter with her next off-watch. Take along a bottle of soma. Space – Jenna reined in her thoughts. Romanticism must be catching. Anyway, Cally believed drink interfered with her psychic antennae.

#

Five days' flight from Station Che, Jenna answered her cabin door to find Blake fidgeting there with a perplexed scowl. Smelling trouble, the free trader demanded, “What's happened?”

“Nothing as such, Jen. It's just my wretched mind playing up again.”

Jenna steered him to a chair and poured a dram of soma. Gulping it, Blake studied his hands between his knees and told her, “It's coming back to me, Jenna. Like the memories of Travis became accessible to me when I heard his name. Only with Yevgeny it isn't coming easily. I don't know, it's higgledy-piggledy, incoherent snatches. But I can see his face, younger, as he was then. And – I have this nagging impression that there was a rift between us. That I remember him with regret – I admired him as a Freedom Party founder, and I lost him – lost him a while before my capture. We fought, it wasn't a personal matter. An ideological crisis in the Freedom Party, that's it, and he split away from the party proper. But he hasn't mentioned any falling-out to me, he says we were together until my capture.”

“Have you confronted him with this?”

“No, no need to confront. It's only a kind of waking dream. My mind plays tricks on me, lays snares, leads me down the garden path if I let it. There are plenty of reasons why the psycho-manipulators may have implanted more than one reality. Maybe what I'm remembering is a story that didn't 'take'. That didn't graft easily, as it were, and so was written over with a different reality. Or it may have been a prelude to the serious conditioning, a piece of 'submission therapy' – psychological sadism, in plainer language. They suggest to me that my lover and I were alienated – or that we weren't lovers at all. And my morale is kicked out from under me, leaving me a little more vulnerable to the real brainwashing.”

“There'll come a point,” suggested Jenna, “when you'll have to decide to trust what your memory dredges up for you. Obviously it's doing its gallant best to reorder itself. Rejecting your own efforts might be harmful. Space knows I'm no psychologist, Roj, but if your mind salvages the truth and you treat it as just another lie, that may inhibit any more truth from surfacing.”

Blake mulled that over. “Logical,” he conceded. “Nevertheless, am I to trust my notoriously unreliable memory over Yevgeny? That would be faithless. What motive has Yevgeny to lie? The possibility of this being a con was ruled out long ago. He was definitely in the Freedom Party; there's the holo and the familiarity of his face to prove that. Besides, he hasn't yet crept out of my arms in the dead of night to hijack the flight deck.”

The free trader refused to smile. “Why can't an ex-Freedom Party member have turned con trickster, Blake? In your eyes all rebels are saints and your Freedom Party comrades nothing short of angels. There's the practical fact to be considered, though, that sedition is not a lucrative career.”

“Yevgeny cares nothing for money.” Blake was quietly convinced. “His dedication to the rebellion goes deeper than my own, Jenna. His is less hypocritical, too. Ask him about my classist treatment of Vila one day. Or my undemocratic ship; or, matter of fact, my sexism.” His eyes sidled over mischievously.

“Do you imagine I need to ask Yevgeny about your sexism?”

Blake had the grace to blush. “Never mind, he'll keep me to my principles. Stannis --”

She grinned, then.

“-- it's no con job, the love between us.” Nodding his thanks to her for listening, he left.

The free trader prowled her cabin. She'd spent that evening with Cally after all. The Auron had been glad to chat about her instincts concerning Liberator's guest. Telepathic instinct, Jenna supposed. With her thin face like a white witch's – or a hierophant, or something eerie like that – she'd said, “Yevgeny's desperation worries me. He isn't easy for me to be near, there's an intensity there that repels me. If he were Auron, I'd be inclined to doubt his psychic health. Since he is Terran --” her wide dark eyes went sullen as always when she was contemplating Terran shortcomings; Jenna was more amused than anything, particularly as she looked sultry when she was sullen – “I can't judge his stability. Terrans have lax standards about what is sane and what insane.”

“You mean he's a bit off the planet?”

“I would guess he's under severe stress.”

“But he's so mild-looking.”

“Yevgeny is anything but mild. He may give that impression because he's not quite in touch with our reality. To me it appears he'd mentally inhabiting a fantasy world. And perhaps there's a conflict between the fantasy and reality. He's deeply unhappy – though, paradoxically, his contentment with Blake is not feigned.”

Interpret that as you will, Jenna thought. He sounds like a fey old fighter who should have thrown it in before it got to him. Though none of the crew liked to interfere, she intended to stay alert and unobtrusively armed. Damn, but Blake can certainly pick them at times.

#

The free trader was tutoring Avon through a tactical exercise when another transmission came in.

“You'll never guess,” the technician said. “It's for Blake.”

“He's popular this week. Trace it.”

“Looks like it's been channelled through Station Che again. How many forgotten old flames does Blake have?”

“Okay, play it on the console viewer.”

Avon hesitated. “It is tagged specifically for one Roj Blake.”

“You polite Alpha, you. If it's nothing to do with Yevgeny, I won't look at it. But I have a hunch.”

“You've been spending too much time with Cally.”

Jenna planted herself at the console and waited. Shrugging gracefully, as if to say such spying was beneath him, Avon complied.

The transmission was from a woman of mature years with an asiatic face and a battered army cap. “This is Radha,” she said, “late of the Freedom Party. Roj, I've not contacted you since your escape – frankly because I can't forgive and forget the massacre that followed your renunciation of us. Not that you can be blamed – you're as much a victim as the dead. But one avoids reminders of bitter times. Onto what I wished to say. I doubt you'll remember me – if not, you won't remember a comrade named Yevgeny either. So I'll tell you a little bit about him.

“Yevgeny only went downhill two years after you joined the Party. A familiar story – his life companion, a sweet lad called Felipe, was inconsiderate enough to catch a laser bolt. Naturally we all sympathised madly with Yevgeny. But soon it was the general consensus that Yevgeny was going off. Oh, he didn't lose his faith, but it became a broody, volatile faith. Took the bad luck to heart; you know how it happens.

“Anyway, our party tactics were no longer bloody enough for Yevgeny. In those days we hadn't yet abandoned pacifism, Roj. You wasted a year or so trying to hang onto him. A sucker, I thought you were – Yevgeny's tantrums were attention-seeking, and you played into his hands, made him feel wanted. I would have called the sulky child's bluff and said either go or pull yourself together. When he did storm off it was to join a splinter sect, with an ideology that accommodated his fury. No passive resistance for him. Must have been difficult for him to tear himself away from your coddling. You were the only one who could provoke any reaction in him. With you he'd argue passionately; anyone else and he was an inert mass of black depression. We used to suspect he had an eye for you. Though of course he would have denied it vehemently – he was dead Felipe's and no-one else's ever.

“Since then we've all degenerated. Now you're into the blood tactics Yevgeny used to clamour for. And him – it's a spiral path downwards, isn't it? You know of a terrorist faction named the Front Line. Yevgeny's pledged his loyalty to that mob. He was implicated in that Mars spaceport bombing which gave rebels a filthy name two years back. Twenty civilians unwillingly martyred for the revolution. That kind of act is only a pale echo of the Federation's massive terrorist operations. But we haven't an ice-comet's chance in a nova of terrifying the Federation as much as they terrify us, and to try brings us nothing but bad publicity... But you're familiar with the arguments, Roj.

“No doubt you're aware of the Front Line's frustration with moderates like yourself. Popular moderates are more a hindrance than a help to the rebellion, their theory goes. Your kind delude the people into believing revolution can be achieved by picking off a few troopers and military stations. With your sweet nothings to listen to, the populace will never recognise the necessity for total war. Your way, the rebellion and the slaughter will drag on interminably – you only prolong the misery of the people. Therefore the blood you spill is less justifiable than the blood their terrorist gangs spill.

“The Front Line has been agonising over whether or not conscience obliges them to assassinate these counter-production moderates. To them it's a question of loyalty to the people versus loyalty to fellow rebels. Only one answer to that – the people are why we're all here. So last year Kym Perej was shot by a Front Line assassin.

“Since the Liberator began operations, you've been soaring up their hit-list. And I caught wind of a rebel rumour, Roj, that our Yevgeny has agreed to be your assassin. Judging by the information leak, at least one of their members isn't convinced that killing comrades is justifiable.

“So I thought I'd warn you. Because I think you're doing a decent enough job, and I don't wish to see the rebellion dominated by fanatics and terror-merchants such as Yevgeny. Look his name up in the bounty files and beware the face. There's no longer time for the ideology of the Freedom Party, Roj. In your fights with Yevgeny you used to say it's a psychological war as much as anything. If we're more loyal to each other than the Feds can understand or equal with their suspicious solidarity, that's a power base. If it's the end of the world when a comrade is killed while the Federation calculates soldier-loss as an estimated resource drain before a battle, that's a power base. If we believe people are on mean more good than bad, then we can't doubt, though it may take a century, that the Federation will fall. Roj, we don't have that moral advantage. We're as human as the Feds, you can't depend upon us to be saner, more faithful, to have more love in us and less hate than the people we're fighting. The most anyone can ask is that we keep fighting, and even that's too tall an order. But it must have been a nice speech – you see,” she half laughed, “I've remembered it all these years.”

The screen faded to grey.

In cold fury Jenna said, “That black-hearted whore.” Marching to the weapons rack she grabbed two guns, belted one on with short tugging motions and bowled the other to Avon.

The technician had to wake up hastily to catch it. Looking at the thing as if wondering what _he_ was supposed to do with it, he asked, “Are you going to tell Blake?” For himself, his instinct was to stuff Yevgeny obliquely out an airlock, say that unfortunate accidents _do_ happen in deep space, and slink away to let Blake cope in private with his bereavement. Cowardice of some nature, no doubt.

Jenna had no such fear of the unkind truth. She could be as sympathetic as you please, but she was intolerant of hiding from reality. “I wasn't going to dump the task on you. Take that and go keep an eye on the bitch.” She jabbed at the intercom. “Blake?”

A pause. The free trader played monotonously with her gun hilt. “Here, Jenna.”

“Can I see you on the flight deck, please?”

“Be there shortly.”

Jenna flipped the toggle. For a long dark moment she met Avon's eyes. “I guess we better not shoot Yevgeny just yet,” she said, and planted her fist in a panel of leather.

The technician disappeared before Blake could clatter cheerfully down the steps.

#

“Won't be long.” Blake touched his lips to the hand he was holding and dropped it.

Alone, Yevgeny sprawled on a lounge, dead exhausted. So far Roj was only smiling when he painted pretty pictures of where they could go if they left Liberator. It was necessary to lure Roj from the ship, else Yevgeny would be strung up by the heels by the crew after putting Roj to sleep. And Yevgeny was obliged to linger on as long as possible for his faction's sake. Absurd to assassinate Roj to help the faction and then reduce the faction's humanpower by getting killed. Everything had to be looked at in terms of furthering the revolution. It would be disloyal to waste his death here when he could die usefully in a suicide-bombing of some obscene Federation oppressor.

Roj wasn't disinclined, he thought, to take a short working holiday from the ship. That was all the opportunity Yevgeny needed to complete his mission, commit his dirty and unjustified crime.

Only why couldn't he muster the energy to spirit Roj away, to end Roj with a gentle draught of sleeping poison in some anonymous town, to hike back to headquarters and waft through his duties and and his death in a dream of these past few days? To hell with that; it was too much to face. Easier if it finished here for Roj and himself too.

There was no way he would shirk his assignment, fail the Front Line. Felipe hadn't wimped out of following his beliefs no matter to what damnation they led; nor would Yevgeny. But he was a miserable veteran who'd lost everything an age ago, and seventeen years of dedication was enough for even the most worthwhile cause in the universe. He'd given enough and _taken_ enough. The revolution could let him go _now_ and be damn grateful.

So, is that decided? he asked himself.

Roj had given him the caring and the closeness he'd looked for from no-one since Felipe. The least Yevgeny could do was to take his punishment after killing the kind fellow. He wasn't looking forward to the massive guilt trip that would follow, that his faction couldn't allay. So give Roj's friends their vengeance. Shoot Roj here, in his sleep, in the warm cramped cabin where he welcomed you and loved you. And let them shoot you to pieces in the morning.

Again he'd fallen for Roj, as he had in a strange way during the ghastly year after Felipe. Yevgeny remembered wandering to Roj's tent once after being too liberal with the soma. Roj was so pitying, always willing to listen to his ramblings. That evening Yevgeny had almost asked to be touched, to be cherished, just once and Roj could forget it in the morning if he preferred. But instead he'd damned himself to loneliness in perverse mourning for Felipe, and Roj had walked him home and brewed him tea and tucked him in. Anyway, back _then_ Roj hadn't thought him so ruinously handsome; back then Roj hadn't been in such a vulnerable, desperate condition.

A soft footfall roused Yevgeny. It was only that quiet Avon fellow. Avon who, from the things Roj had mentioned, was as wrapped in stale grief as Yevgeny was. They looked at each other, Yevgeny lethargic in his slouch, Avon taking up a discreet stance by the wall. Neither was inclined to disturb the silence.

#

“My friend, this will be bad for you,” was Jenna's greeting.

Blake lifted heavy eyebrows, said nothing, and watched neutrally as she played the transmission.

Halfway through he walked to the couch, and sank there to mere listen with his eyes on the hollow between neatly steepled fingers. When Radha had delivered her news he continued to stare, moistening his lips, leaving his tongue between them as if forgetting to complete the gesture.

When his inertia began to spook Jenna she said, “Avon has him holed up.” She wished Blake was angry as she was, not torpid.

Blake dropped his head, fingers knotting. Twisting cruelly. “Tell Avon not to touch him,” he faltered at last.

The free trader decided not to chance opening any floodgates by consoling him. Leave him be unless he comes to you, she thought. Cally's the one to handle these situations, with her people-knowledge and her sensible compassion. Cally's blithely asleep; I wish to the stars I was with her. But there's a piece of charming vermin to rid the ship of.

“I'll be with Yevgeny, then.” When he didn't disagree Jenna withdrew.

#

“Permit me to talk to Roj.” Yevgeny's shoulders looked awkwardly thin, the way they'd fallen to a hump.

Jenna supposed only a terrorist would keep that unassuming dignity when charged with murder. Terrorists, after all, knew they murdered for ideals even while their captors saw them as bestial. At least he wasn't denying anything. “That's the very last thing I'm inclined to let you do.” She was debating whether or not to execute him without fuss.

“I might leave him happier.”

Sardonic Avon joined in then. “I wish I had your faith that the dead are happy.”

The revolutionary smiled wryly at him. But Avon's face had gone cover, and he was glancing to the doorway. Yevgeny twisted in his seat to see Blake lurking there.

So he couldn't stay away for long, thought Jenna. She noted his eyes were a bit the worse for wear. Swollen. But he was pulling on a fistful of hair as he did when wrestling with a difficult concept. “Yevgeny,” he appealed. “You think I'm doing so much _damage_ to the rebellion's chances?”

Jenna didn't want Yevgeny weaving more of his spells for Blake. “This is no time to debate rebel philosophy,” she said.

“But it _is_. Yevgeny --”

“Terrorism,” chanted Yevgeny, “is the only stranglehold a tiny taskforce can have on a gargantuan state. It's kicking below the belt, but they're vulnerable nowhere else. If you had any concept of how powerless we are, you'd understand the desperation tactics.”

Blake ventured further in; ideology was safe ground. It wouldn't collapse and tumble him into a void of magnesium-intense emotions like stars in intermible hollowness. Which was worse, the emotion or the vacuum? “You're taking out your personal sense of desperation, Yevgeny – on those citizens at Mars spaceport --” He said nothing so foolish as, but you're so gentle...

“I did that for a dead friend who would have hated me for it.”

When he said nothing further Blake prodded, “Your life companion?” Using Radha's phrase.

Yevgeny hesitated to dredge up Felipe's jealous ghost again to come between them. For a while there he'd abandoned his role of widower. But he spat at his knees, “Ten years together, and eight years ago they butchered him, mindlessly, animalistically, with no sense of the sacredness of him, of each human life --”

“We all understand grief.” Blake contemplated him with subdued sadness, yearning after something that never was for him.

“It wasn't mere grief,” insisted Yevgeny. “It was a realisation that they are barbaric cannibals who believe it _proper_ to prey on fellow humans, and there's no civilizing them. My Felipe was marching in a peaceful protest when it happened. The sort of passive resistance you used to promote in your charming little Freedom Party.”

“I'm not so peaceable these days, Yevgeny. Your argument with me is long past.”

“No. You kill Feds. It's not enough. You play a private game with the military which had been in a meaningless stalemate for years. Don't preach to me about the innocence of civilians. When I look at a loyal citizen I think, you witness slavery and slaughter and aren't even moved to protest. People haven't yet learnt empathy, Roj. That's inhuman – and it's _complicity_. In a galaxy as extreme as the Federation's one, anyone not a rebel sympathiser is guilty of complicity. It's a lie that we can win a clean war, Roj. You always blinded people with false hope.”

His wistful, bitter brown eyes fell from Blake. After a moment he dug in a pocket, drew out a miniature pistol. Travis' pistol, taken at Centero; and stolen from Blake's cabin. Yevgeny dangled it lazily between his knees.

Fist on her gun, Jenna drawled, “You don't kid yourself you'd have the time to use that?”

While Blake said with heavy irony, “You were going to rid the rebellion of me with _Travis'_ weapon?” He felt disillusioned, if not quite disenchanted.

The assassin merely smiled up at him, a placid, private smile. “You and me could give it up now, Roj. If I put you out of your misery your friend there would put me out of mine. It's just how I had things planned – my reward was to be throwing in the towel with you, Roj. I'm phobic about dying at Federation hands, you know, ridiculously frightened – which at least means my deathwish hasn't taken me over. It would be like a luxury to die among comrades.”

“I'm no comrade of yours,” the free trader told him.

“Ah, but Roj is.”

His morbidity had Blake taking distracted paces here and there. For complex reasons, Jenna suspected. Yevgeny was kinky in the head, but in a particular rebel way that Blake understood too well for comfort. He looked dead scared, not only for what was to become of Yevgeny, but of Yevgeny's queerness. “Neither of need _die_ , Yev – let's not talk of dying. Jenna won't shoot you, for star's sake, she'll be content with less drastic safeguards.” He gave a sob of laughter. “We can lock you in a cabin or something. We can discuss the matter sensibly, Yev – just give me the gun.”

Jenna warned, “Stay away from him, Blake, don't be a fool.” He was as familiar as she with the subtle tools of the trade assassins employed. Poisons hidden in the palm that when clamped to the skin penetrated the blood. Needles sewn into the cuff. Darts riddled through the clothing.

But Blake was intent on saving the situation. He approached Yevgeny, perched on the couch with him as though forlornly trying to befriend a fractious alien. “Please?” he asked, nodding at the pistol, though he didn't push it by grabbing.

“I promised you to my faction,” Yevgeny told him. With graceful resignation, he laid the gun between them. Blake picked it up, dropped it in a pocket, and wiped his face with a trembly hand.

If he thinks an assassin would depend on a single weapon thieved from his prey, Jenna thought, he's kidding himself. Precisely what did Blake hope to do – cage a nutty terrorist in his cabin to keep as a pet? She watched Yevgeny unwaveringly, too edgy for any enemy's good.

“I lied to you, Roj,” Yevgeny nearly whispered, so Blake had to lean in to catch it. He didn't lean away again, but gestured to the Guelakin corpse-ring.

“That's Felipe's,” he said, more gentle than anything else. Groping for a convincing way to say it wasn't important.

Lamely, Yevgeny laid his hand, palm up, near Blake. Not looking at him. Blake took it. Which was a mistake; tears welled up again. He suffocated them by arguing he could keep Yevgeny here, straighten him out a trifle. Liberator was, after all, a refuge for homeless waifs.

“I only lied – about the past, Roj.”

Blake was ashamed of how badly he wanted to hear that. “I know.” Yevgeny was a fantasiser, not a deceiver. In need of a friend to love after the rotten time he'd had of it since Earth. And he was clutching Blake's hand in a tight and sweaty grip. “I think your faction is insane,” Blake said persuasively. “They've conned you, Yev. You don't have to be like this.”

“You'd like to convert me, Roj?”

Kneading the damp fingers, Blake wished he had guts enough to look appallingly soft in Jenna's eyes by kissing the tender fatigued skin beneath Yevgeny's eyes, by shepherding him away and looking after him. “Can't I help heal you, Yevgeny?”

“I can't leave my faction. You won't join it. And I won't walk about dead in the heart any more, Roj, I won't walk away from here. I just thought you might come with me.”

Blake was lost, brow furrowed in fond concentration and amusement. “Where, my sweet fellow?'

The gesture wasn't so subtle after all when it came; Jenna glimpsed it at once, the way Yevgeny slunk his free hand into the breast of his shirt, the swift fumbling there so near to Blake. Poison dart, then. There was no choice for and no time.

Blake yelped, “Yevgeny --” when the needle of light hit. Tugging his stiff-limp friend he jolted with him, and whimpered once.

The free trader glanced away.

#

“But why didn't you _inform_ me there was a troop carrier, Avon? When I leave you on watch it doesn't mean the Liberator has temporarily quit the rebellion until Roj Blake wakes up --”

Stopping dead, Blake looked comically amazed to find himself yelling.

Avon continued to punch buttons at his station. “Wretched night?” he inquired without looking at the rebel.

“A bit that way, Avon. Forgive me.”

“Understandable. Don't make a habit of them, however.”

“Hmm?”

“Wretched nights.” Avon's sleek eyes came up. “It was only a very modest troop carrier.”

Biting his lips in a quasi-grin, Blake returned to his papers scattered over the couch. “It doesn't help, you know, when you're perched up there watching me.”

“Can you always tell?”

“You have a remarkably tangible stare.” Blake buried himself in his work, until Jenna appeared to share the watch with him. The free trader and he hadn't found much time for each other's company since spacing Yevgeny's body. That was Blake's fault for wallowing in a misanthropic mood. So he tossed down his papers to welcome her. “I was wondering what kept you.”

“Didn't take too much racking of the brains, I trust.”

At least her spirits were high. Blake thought he might inquire into that after Avon left for his off-watch. No doubt Avon was surfeited with shipboard romances.

Jenna joined him on the couch, and – a rare initiative – gave him a quick hug. He smiled his appreciation.

“You must miss him,” she said very directly.

Pensively he answered. “Yevgeny was manipulative. Emotionally and ideologically skewwiff. Tended to follow his feelings off the deep end. Nevertheless, even if I didn't love him five years ago, I'm afraid I did last week.”

“I'm sorry it had to end that way. If only because you might find it difficult to forget who pulled the trigger.”

“No help for it. I understood you would if he looked like harming any of us. He understood that, too.” Blake smiled at her. “We're comrades, on this ship. Each other's safety comes before outsiders – I like that.”

“I feared I was too late. Those darts are horrors, I've dodged one or two in my time. Lucky he was clumsy with the thing.”

“There was nothing there in his shirt, Jen. I ransacked it. That gesture of his was plain, deliberate suicide.”

The free trader said, “I see.”

“No-one can stop a determined suicide – and if that was the path he chose, perhaps no-one had the right to.” Blake mused, “More of my memories are clarifying. When he lost his partner it was like his soul collapsed, I thought so at the time. I wanted to help him – never knew how. I can't blame him for anything, Jenna. He was a beautiful if haywire person, I only wish he'd had enough faith in me to stay alive. Then I would have fought anyone and anything to keep him sane and happy and with me. After all, he was all that I had.”

“Before too much longer,” Jenna said, “you'll remember the true story. And who you did love.”

“Think so? I might still wish it had been Yevgeny, though. Yevgeny told damn nice lies.” Blake jumped up with his papers, taking them to a console. “But, to work. I'm just in the mood for bombing a spaceport or two. Nothing like it for the bereaved, I hear.”

Jenna eyed him. “Not very amusing, Blake.”

He quirked his mouth, eyes too dark for deciphering. Then he was lost deep in his target analysis data.

###

###


End file.
